Alexa Amundson
8ddac49849
Paid Search: 5 ad groups, 10 ads, negative keywords, budget allocation Social: 5 Twitter threads, Reddit/HN posts for 5 subreddits + Show HN Display: 5 banner sets × 4 formats (leaderboard, rectangle, skyscraper, mobile) Video: 60s 'Own Your Stack' script + 30s 'The Math' script Email: 5-email nurture sequence with segmentation rules All backed by verified stats and named psych principles RoadChain-SHA2048: 3d877b6d5e4827c0 RoadChain-Identity: alexa@sovereign RoadChain-Full: 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
387 lines
8.2 KiB
Markdown
387 lines
8.2 KiB
Markdown
# BlackRoad Twitter/X Threads
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**Principle:** Peripheral Route + Social Validation + Build-in-Public
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**Rule:** 80% educate, 20% promote
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---
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## Thread 1: The Stat-Flip (Vendor Lock-In)
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**Type:** Educate (80%)
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```
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1/ 94% of IT leaders fear vendor lock-in with their cloud provider.
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Not mildly uncomfortable. Concerned.
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42% are considering moving workloads back on-premises.
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Here's the math nobody's talking about: 🧵
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2/ An H100 on AWS costs $3.90/hour.
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Run it 24/7 for a year: $33,696.
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For ONE GPU.
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3/ A Hailo-8 AI accelerator costs $99.
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It delivers 26 TOPS of neural inference.
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It plugs into a Raspberry Pi 5.
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It runs 24/7 forever on pennies of electricity.
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4/ In 26 hours of cloud GPU time, you've spent more than the Hailo-8 costs to OWN.
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26 hours vs. forever.
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That's not a pricing comparison. That's a different economic model.
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5/ We run 16 AI models on two of these.
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52 TOPS total.
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5 Raspberry Pis.
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30 websites. 50 AI skills. 207 git repos.
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Total monthly cloud bill: $0.
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6/ The self-hosted cloud market hit $18.48B in 2025.
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Growing at 11.9% CAGR.
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Edge AI growing at 21.7%.
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This isn't a hobby. It's where the market is going because the math requires it.
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Source: Grand View Research, Parallels 2026 Survey
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```
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---
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## Thread 2: Build-in-Public (Infrastructure Tour)
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**Type:** Educate (80%)
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```
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1/ People ask what "self-hosted AI" actually looks like in production.
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Here's our full infrastructure — every node, every service, every port.
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Nothing hidden. 🧵
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2/ NODE 1: Alice (.49)
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- Gateway router
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- Pi-hole DNS (blocks 120+ tracking domains)
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- PostgreSQL database
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- Qdrant vector database for RAG
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Hardware: Raspberry Pi 5, 8GB RAM
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Power: ~8 watts
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3/ NODE 2: Cecilia (.96)
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- 16 Ollama models (Llama, Mistral, CodeLlama, Phi, Gemma)
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- Embedding engine (nomic-embed-text)
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- Hailo-8 accelerator: 26 TOPS
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Hardware: Raspberry Pi 5 + Hailo-8 M.2
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Power: ~12 watts
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4/ NODE 3: Octavia (.101)
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- Gitea: 207 repositories (PRIMARY git host)
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- Docker Swarm manager
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- Hailo-8 accelerator: 26 TOPS
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Hardware: Raspberry Pi 5 + Hailo-8 M.2
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Power: ~12 watts
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5/ NODE 4: Aria (.98)
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- Agent runtime
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- NATS v2.12.3 pub/sub messaging
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- Agent-to-agent communication
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Hardware: Raspberry Pi 5
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Power: ~8 watts
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6/ NODE 5: Lucidia (.38)
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- 334 web applications
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- GitHub Actions runner
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- CI/CD pipeline
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Hardware: Raspberry Pi 4
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Power: ~6 watts
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7/ THE MESH:
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- WireGuard encrypts everything
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- NATS connects 4 nodes for agent messaging
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- Cloudflare Tunnels expose services (no open ports)
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- Pi-hole filters DNS fleet-wide
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Total power: ~46 watts
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Total monthly bill: $0
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8/ This serves 30 websites across 20 domains.
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It processes 50 AI skills.
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It hosts 207 repos on Gitea.
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It runs a billing system (RoadPay) that processes real payments.
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All on $400 of hardware.
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9/ The question isn't whether this works.
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You're reading this tweet on a device that loaded content served by this infrastructure.
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It works.
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The question is why you're still paying hourly for something that costs $400 once.
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blackroad.io
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```
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---
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## Thread 3: Psychology of Advertising (Educate)
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**Type:** Educate (80%)
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```
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1/ I studied the Psychology of Advertising at the University of Minnesota.
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Here are 7 things I learned that changed how I think about every ad I see:
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🧵
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2/ 80% OF ADS ARE MISUNDERSTOOD.
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Not ignored. Misunderstood.
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The audience sees the ad, processes it, and walks away believing something the advertiser didn't intend.
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(Fennis & Stroebe, Psychology of Advertising)
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3/ There are TWO PROCESSING ROUTES.
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Central Route: you think carefully, evaluate arguments, counterargue.
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Peripheral Route: you use shortcuts — design, social proof, brand recognition.
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Most ads are designed for peripheral. Most claims need central.
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4/ THE TRUTH EFFECT.
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The more you see a claim, the more true it seems.
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This works on true AND false claims.
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Ethical play: repeat things that are actually true, frequently, everywhere.
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5/ COMPLIANCE PRINCIPLE: COMMITMENT/CONSISTENCY.
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Once you say yes to a small thing, you're more likely to say yes to a bigger thing.
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"Star this repo" → "try a deploy" → "become a user" → "become a customer."
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Every funnel is a commitment ladder.
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6/ 94% OF IT LEADERS FEAR VENDOR LOCK-IN.
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Not because of a marketing campaign.
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Because the math is bad and the contracts are worse.
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The best marketing amplifies a truth people already feel.
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7/ PERSONALIZATION HAS A CREEPY THRESHOLD.
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"For developers who self-host" = good.
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"Hey [name], we noticed you visited our pricing page 3 times" = creepy.
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Segment by role, not by surveillance.
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8/ THE MOST POWERFUL MARKETING ISN'T PERSUASION.
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It's accurate comprehension.
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A customer who understands what they're getting stays.
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A customer who was tricked leaves — and tells everyone.
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We cite our sources. We verify our stats. We show our infrastructure.
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blackroad.io/blog
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```
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---
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## Thread 4: Product Launch (RoadPay)
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**Type:** Promote (20%)
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```
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1/ We built our own billing system.
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Not because Stripe is bad. Because Stripe is the card charger — not the billing brain.
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RoadPay is live. Here's what it does: 🧵
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2/ RoadPay runs on Cloudflare D1.
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4 plans. 4 add-ons. Usage tracking. Invoice generation.
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Stripe handles the card charge. RoadPay handles everything else.
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3/ Why not just use Stripe Billing?
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Because Stripe Billing is $0.50/invoice + 0.4% of revenue.
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At scale, your billing platform takes a cut of every dollar.
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RoadPay costs $0/month. It runs on a D1 database. We own it.
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4/ The stack:
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- D1 (Cloudflare) for the database
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- Workers for the API
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- Stripe for card processing only
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- Auth at auth.blackroad.io (JWT, 42 users)
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5/ 4 plans:
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Starter → Builder → Pro → Enterprise
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Each tier unlocks more agents, more compute, more skills.
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No "contact sales" wall. No enterprise pricing email. Pick a plan. Start building.
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6/ This is what "own your stack" means in practice.
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We don't rent our billing system.
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We don't rent our git hosting.
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We don't rent our AI inference.
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We don't rent our DNS.
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We built it. We own it. We run it.
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RoadPay is at tollbooth.blackroad.io
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```
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---
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## Thread 5: Edge AI Market (Educate)
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**Type:** Educate (80%)
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```
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1/ The edge AI market is about to 5x.
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$24.91 billion in 2025.
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$118.69 billion by 2033.
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21.7% CAGR.
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Here's why — and why the hardware costs $99: 🧵
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2/ LATENCY.
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Cloud inference = network round trip.
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Edge inference = on-device.
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For real-time AI (agents, sensors, interactive), the speed of light is too slow when your data center is 2,000 miles away.
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3/ PRIVACY.
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Edge inference = data never leaves the device.
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Not "encrypted in transit."
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Not "processed in a secure enclave."
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Never. Leaves. The. Device.
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4/ COST.
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Cloud inference: metered, billed hourly, scales linearly.
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Edge inference: buy once, run forever. The more you use it, the cheaper per inference.
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A Hailo-8 costs $99. An H100 on AWS costs $3.90/hour.
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In 26 hours, the cloud costs more than owning the edge hardware forever.
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5/ The AI inference market is $106B in 2025.
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Most of that is cloud inference — metered by the hour.
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Edge AI hardware is $26B, growing at 17.6%.
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The shift is happening because the economics are undeniable.
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6/ We run 52 TOPS of edge inference on two $99 accelerators.
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16 language models. 50 AI skills. Production workloads.
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On Raspberry Pis. In a closet. In Minnesota.
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The future of inference is local. It always should have been.
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Sources: Grand View Research, MarketsandMarkets
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```
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---
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## Single Posts (Rotation)
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### Build-in-Public
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```
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Shipped today: [FEATURE/FIX/IMPROVEMENT]
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[ONE LINE: what it does]
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[SCREENSHOT]
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```
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### Stat-Flip
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```
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[X]% of [people] [do something painful].
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We [do the opposite]. Here's the result: [NUMBER].
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[LINK]
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```
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### Community Highlight
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```
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[USER] just [deployed/built/created] [THING] with BlackRoad.
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[THEIR QUOTE — 1 sentence]
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This is what "own your stack" looks like.
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```
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### 80/20 Educate
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```
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Things I wish I knew before self-hosting AI:
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1. [INSIGHT]
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2. [INSIGHT]
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3. [INSIGHT]
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Learned from running 16 models on Raspberry Pis for [MONTHS].
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```
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---
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## Posting Schedule
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| Day | Type | Ratio |
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|-----|------|-------|
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| Monday | Educate (thread or insight) | 80% |
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| Tuesday | Build-in-public | 80% |
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| Wednesday | Educate (stat or framework) | 80% |
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| Thursday | Promote (product/feature) | 20% |
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| Friday | Engage (question/poll/community) | 80% |
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